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As spring blossomed into summer Rosa discovered the Muskoka lakes from the bridge of the Kipper. She photographed the puffing ships, the belching mills, the prosperous cottagers. Her camera followed their caretakers as they took down the snow shutters and let the cool May sunlight flood into the chalets. Her broom helped sweep away the clam shells discarded by scavenging racoons and the carcasses of dead mice frozen during the winter. She photographed pearl-white boat houses on emerald curved bays and watched the sleek Ditchburn launches being lowered from the rafters into their slips. Through her lens the supply steamers Mink and Newminko plied the lakes to stock the cottages. Their crew of four - captain, engineer, butcher and grocer - brought staples and gossip to kitchen maids. Filet steaks and roasts were supplied by McCulley's Meat Market. Hardware, clothing and shoes were carried on special order.

Every week the Smelt brought Pike his newspapers and a dollar pot of Quick Cure, a patented remedy used with success in curing colds. He had never shaken off the cough contracted on rounding the Horn and a teaspoon heated on a piece of old tin filled his cabin with fumes which eased sleep. Every Sunday the long-bowed, canvas-canopied church boat nosed from dock to dock gathering the faithful. Private yellow pine launches, their fly-wheels spinning amidships, spat smoke and sparks into the sweet air. The diminutive Gypsy from Clark's Mill took more than a day to tow its log boom the few miles from Skelton Bay to Snug Harbour. She often blocked the waterway leaving no passage clear and the other boats whistled their irritation at the sawmill's pointers.

“In my heart there are clouds and thunderstorms,” Rosa told Pike when the days warmed and the air filled with the drone of insects. On a stormy night in June she returned to his cabin and took him as her lover without fuss or formality. As the sway of the ship rocked them to sleep he called her his angel.

“You know how angels behave, don't you?” Rosa replied. “They always go back to where they came from.” Then she anchored herself to the bed, one foot locked over the edge, the other thrust between their two mattresses and wrapped the sheet around them like the spirals of a conch shell.

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